


Defining Moments

by gelbes_gilatier



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst and Humor, Break Up, Episode Tag, Episode: s04e20 The Last Man, F/M, Family, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hope, Hurt/Comfort, Off-screen Character Death, Sad, Weddings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-14
Updated: 2012-03-22
Packaged: 2017-10-29 12:43:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/320007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gelbes_gilatier/pseuds/gelbes_gilatier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A series of snippets on Evan Lorne, after John Sheppard disappeared. TLM timeline, so, uh, sad, at least in parts.</p><p>#7 <i>You And I Will Meet Again</i>: Revisting TLM-Timeline!Lorne again, back at Arlington National Cemetery, at the funeral of his wife, Captain Laura Cadman-Lorne.</p><p>#8 <i>If It Kills Me</i>: Last visit to TLM-timeline!Lorne... back when Laura Cadman was still alive. What's going through your head when you're about to tie the knot amidst war and destruction?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Faith that Cleans Your Wound

**Author's Note:**

> So, uh, yeah. This is a little collection of eight snippets on Evan Lorne in the TLM-timeline. It's kind of an alternative road to my _Protect and Survive_ series, which is why it's archieved under the same series. I wrote most of those kind of backwards, starting from the end. Some were written after I thought I was done with TLM!Lorne (he's wearing one out, I can tell you) and I jumped to the chance to post them all in chronological order. I hope it'll make sense to you :)

  
**The Faith that Cleans Your Wound**   


“ _There's a vision  
Coming soon  
Through the faith  
That cleans your wound  
Hearts of olden glory  
Will be renewed.”_

_Runrig, “Hearts of Olden Glory”_

He shakes his head as he goes through everything McKay sent him again. Altering the timeline… that’s crazy even for McKay. From what he can understand… it could work, stressing the _could_. Sending Sheppard a message he is supposed to find in about 40.000 years… he’s seen a lot during his time in Atlantis and in the SGC, but he can’t remember ever having seen something so crazy and hypothetical.

It seems McKay hasn’t been doing anything else than developing those calculations over the last 23 years. 23 years ago… he remembers Rodney and Jennifer Keller-McKay coming back to the SGC and Jennifer dying there from the aftereffects of being exposed too much to the Hoffan drug. He also remembers how devastated Rodney had been after her death. He wonders… could it have been Jennifer’s death that had started all of this?

It still sounds strange to him… Rodney McKay of all people being compelled into dedicating his life to something that could very well be a big heap of disconnected letters and numbers and not worth the scrap of paper it’s printed on by the death of his _wife_? But then his gaze falls onto the pictures on his fireplace’s mantelpiece… and all of this doesn’t seem so impossible anymore.

With a sigh – and less agility than 25 years ago, mind you… he’s really getting old – he stands up and walks over to the mantelpiece. There are pictures of his sister, his nephews, his parents… and his wife. One of her in her Marine Dress Blues shortly after her field-promotion to Captain, then their wedding picture – they even managed to find a white dress for her, even with all the horror and commotion going on in the galaxy around them – one, that shows only her, carefree and laughing on a day off on the mainland and then a sketch of her he’d taken a lot of time to perfect.

He closes his eyes and leans on the mantelpiece. He shouldn’t have looked at the pictures again. It just served to open old wounds. They hadn’t even been married for four months, when an attack of Michael’s forces had hit them. He’d been up in his 302, and she’d been down in Atlantis, fighting off the intruders. When he’d come back down, the only thing Jennifer could do was give him her dog tags and tell him how bravely his wife had helped to defend the infirmary. She’d sacrificed her life, and then and there his own had shattered to pieces.

He’d never married again. There had been women in his life, of course, but none of them had been Laura. In the end he had accepted that she’d always be the only one for him and had dedicated his life to his military career. It took him far up – to the top of the SGC, and there are rumors going around he’ll soon find himself in the top ranks of the Pentagon. But in the end of the day, when he comes home, he still finds himself wondering if there shouldn’t have been more to his life than fighting and commanding and politics sometimes.

As if on autopilot he finds himself walking over to his desk and opening one of its drawers. All by themselves his hands find what he didn’t know he was looking for. A pair of dog tags… He still knows the inscription by heart. As he closes his hand around them, he feels emotions surging through him. Anger at Fate and maybe even at God, though he was never a strong believer, that they let all of this happen – Sheppard’s disappearance, Teyla’s death, Michael’s crusade to reduce a whole galaxy to rubble, his personal tragedy… The desperation when they had lost Colonel Carter. The pain when Jennifer had told him about Laura’s death, as fresh and raw as all these years back and the terrible feelings from Laura’s funeral…

All of this comes back, and suddenly he understands Rodney McKay very, very well. More than that, actually… he feels even kinship. Rodney McKay isn’t the only one who found the love of his life in the Pegasus Galaxy and had her taken away from him by the same thing, and he isn’t the only one who lost friends to this galaxy. God, he thinks, you aren’t only old, you’re also starting to get crazy. You meant it when you told Rodney you didn’t have the right to make the decision to let him alter the timeline, and you didn’t get this far because you constantly overstepped your competences.

No, all his life he’d acted within the bounds of his rank and his authority, with only one exception: Falling in love with first Lieutenant and later Captain Laura Cadman and even throwing the UCMJ to the wind and marrying her amid the war raging through the Pegasus galaxy. Right in this moment… this feels like the best decision he ever made, because she was worth it.

He can still hear her laughter, after all these years, and see her fierce dedication in the fight. She never took crap from anyone – least of all from him – and she always knew how to help him unwind if things got too rough. She... His gaze falls back on the heap of paper McKay sent him.

It could work… he just needs to open the ‘Gate and let McKay through… if he did, he could very well end up in front of a court martial and he could surely forget the Pentagon… but what is a bunch of bureaucrats against the chance of never letting all these things happen? What is a court martial against the chance for his younger self to find happiness that doesn’t solely depend on a military career?

Maybe his younger self would be absolutely against risking his career for the very flimsy chance of giving the timeline another bend, but then again his younger self hasn’t yet seen a galaxy fall to pieces, hasn’t yet had to experience losing Colonel Carter, hasn’t yet seen Rodney McKay despair at his wife’s death bed… and hasn’t had to live 25 years without Laura Cadman-Lorne, just to be offered a chance at giving everything a different outcome.

He pauses. There’s also the point of all the _good_ things having happened. There’s Jenna and Matthew Kemp, having had celebrated 20 years of marriage just a few months ago. There’s also Will and Jessica Meyers, parents of three extremely bright, extremely lovely children, even though they never thought they’d have even one. Would any of that happened if all those terrible things had never happened, he wonders not for the first time in the last 25 years.

Then he smiles. Yes, he thinks, maybe it would. If Jenna and Matt Kemp hadn’t admitted to themselves how they felt about each other if Laura hadn’t died so damn early, she’d probably have _made_ them admit it. And who knows if Will and Jessi hadn’t been destined to have kids later in life than expected right from the beginning? The Kemps would also have been able to invite the rest of their team to their wedding, and Will and Jessi would probably have made Laura their children’s godmother. Teyla und Shepppard… yeah. And maybe they wouldn’t have lost Carter, probably the most intelligent woman that ever walked the goddamn planet. Maybe Maureen Reece and Thomas Moore would have gotten their shit together after all… he shakes his head.

Yes, maybe his faith has been diminished in the last 25 years, but this stack of paper on his coffee table… it suddenly feels like the epiphany he’d been missing all these last years. Something in McKay’s earnestness and urgency has stirred something in him – a kind of hope he hasn’t felt for a long time. And so his decision is made.

He takes a deep breath and picks up his phone to call his adjunct at the SGC. When Stevens picks up, he finally seals his own fate. “Yeah, Stevens… could you get me Dr. Rodney McKay to the SGC? I’ll be in my office in twenty minutes. Yes, it’s urgent. Very well… thank you.”


	2. Some Brand New Luck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evan Lorne, having been invited to a friends' house, trying not to be too bitter. It's been eight years since his wife died, after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, apparently, AO3 ate the chapter I posted last night, so I'm trying this again. So, uh, what did I write last time in my A/N? Oh, right. This was written for a friend, **-leah** , because she wanted to see TLM!Lorne happy, just _once_. The OCs in this chapter, Jenna and Matt Kemp, are hers and were borrowed with her generous permission, from her Team Kemp series (the TLM!timeline stories in the series, that is). Currently, she only published them in German but if any of you read German, I'll be happy to link them to you :)

** **

**Defining Moments: Some Brand New Luck**  
   
 _“Stood on the corner for a while  
To wait for the wind to blow down on me  
Hoping it takes with it my old ways  
And brings some brand new luck upon me  
Oh it's taking so long I could be wrong, I could be ready  
Oh but if I take my heart's advice  
I should assume it's still unsteady  
I am in repair, I am in repair.”_  
   
 _John Mayer, “In Repair”_

  
Well, then… it’s a night at the Kemps’. Actually… it really _is_ a _night_ at the Kemps’ and he isn’t quite sure if it was really a good idea to accept their invitation for dinner and an overnight stay before flying back to Springs. It’s been roughly two weeks since he broke up with Christine and the conversation with his sister about it rattled him up enough that he briefly considered calling the Casa de Kemp and politely excusing himself with some unexpected thing or other at the SGC having come up.  
   
But then his loyalty kicked in and he also remembered that he’d decided to stop holing up on his roof terrace every time things bore the danger of making him choke up because they might remind him of the fact that others have what he will never have. And anyway, they’re his _friends_ and a year ago Matt let it slip that it’s _his_ fault they’re married – he really fails to see _why_ because he’s convinced Matt would have married Jenna even without their little conversation in the Academy’s catholic chapel – when they moved to their house and he still hasn’t paid them a visit so… no more excuses.  
   
Taking up his duffel from where the taxi driver put it down – letting them pick him up from the bus terminal would have been just a _little_ bit too much – he walks up to the little house. No picket fences yet, he notes, but a front porch with a slightly faded and frayed yellow ribbon wound around one of the pillars. That would be Dr. Jenna Kemp’s attempt at decorating, then. Or maybe… it’s still a remainder from Matt’s deployment to Libya last year. Anyway… door bell. Right. There it is.  
   
Just a push and then there’s light behind the small windows in the door and Jenna’s voice from the inside and then there’s _Jenna_ , throwing “Get your ass back into the kitchen, Matt, he’s here!” over her shoulder before turning around and grinning at him and… _something_ is different. Huh. “Hi! How was the drive? Sorry we didn’t pick you up but we…”  
   
“It’s fine, don’t worry,” he tells her, trying to sound all casual but the thing is… even though he should be used to it by now, seeing Jenna being openly cheerful strikes him as odd. In his head, he still sees her shutting herself off from the rest of them, burying herself in work after Ferrier and Faraday died on a mission, eight years back. And he remembers the first time he saw her again after Atlantis, four years later when Matt suddenly called her his girlfriend. She’d tried to be her usual sarcastic self but he’d seen the signs of just having started therapy and struggling with it all too clearly.  
   
That she’s grinning now and half showing him to the guest room, half ordering her husband around – God knows how she’s doing it but when they get into the living room it looks very much like Matt actually did what she asked of him – is still not quite what he expected. A little… overwhelmed, he lets her do most of the talking and after a declined tentative offer of helping them, he settles on one of the kitchen stools, leaning on the counter and watching them prepare whatever there will be for dinner.  
   
It’s _amazing_ , he thinks, how effortlessly they work together and he remembers Laura once telling him that they all should be glad about the fact that their main means of communication were either caustic barbs at each other, shouting at each other or icy silence because she wasn’t sure if she’d like to see what happened when they discovered the fact that they really do like each other. Well, he thinks, she _would_ have liked it, despite making one or two remarks about those irritatingly happy couples that make you want to scream.  
   
But there’s something about their manner… that perplexes him. He’s used to seeing them exchanging little touches here and there discreetly but… it’s kind of weird how often Matt would put his hand on her hip, pretending to move her out of the way, or how often Jenna would take something from him, very obviously just to touch his hand. There are also those strange glances. Not those at his left hand because he was expecting them and is half waiting for them to ask the same questions Anna had asked him this morning.  
   
No, it’s the glances at _each_ _other_ , as if they’re trying to communicate something… the same way they’d been doing it in Atlantis when they’d tried to coordinate some mischief or other right under the noses of their superiors… they’re _hiding_ something. Oh well. “Okay, kids… what is it?”  
   
The chopping of vegetables and cutting of meat stops. As does the chatter. Instead there’s Jenna biting her lip and Matt rubbing his neck. There’s another moment of that weird silent communication thing, then there’s actually gesturing and mouthed words at each other and then Jenna tells him, “You know… _kids_ is a good cue. Actually, just one kid. We think.” Did he just hear Matt murmur “we _hope_ ”?  
   
And then it really sinks in. Jenna’s pregnant. After three years of being married to Matthew Kemp, she’s pregnant. Well, the practical part of him thinks, it makes sense. As far as he knows, she just got promoted at NASA, another step towards a career that might even satisfy old Wells, Matt got back from deployment a couple of months ago and is, if he remembers the stuff he heard through the grapevine correctly, _this_ close to making Major and a step closer to the Pentagon or maybe NORAD… they’re _settling_ _down_.  
   
The other part, the one that still mourns all those lost chances to have something like that as well, and have it with _Laura_ , would very much like to get up and _leave_ but he’s so used to this initial reaction by now that he doesn’t have much difficulties to get over it for now and the smile on his face is real when he says, “Congratulations.”  
   
She… _blushes_ a little – and is that just a trick of light or did Matt just join her in blushing? – and then says, “Thank you. We weren’t sure if we should tell you. I mean, you’re, well…” Oh that’s just bullshit. Did they really expect he wouldn’t be able to be happy for them?  
   
“It’s okay. I’m a big boy, I can handle it.” The astonishing thing is… the amused grin that he’d wanted to flash for their benefit… was _genuine_. The undertone of self irony didn’t only sound real, it _was_ real. Huh.  
   
Jenna and Matt, though… don’t really know how to react at first and for some reason that… amuses him. Yeah, he wants to say, I may be wearing the ring again but I _know_ that it’s been eight years. I may never put it behind me but I can still try to get over it. He doesn’t get to do it, though, because Jenna says, “We… know that. Of course we do. We just… uh…”  
   
“We’re just still trying to get the hang of this whole telling people thing, that’s all,” Matt adds for her and it earns him a glare. Good to know that some things never change. “Actually, apart from you, only Jenna’s cousin, Anthony Wayne, my sister and Jenna’s mother know about it.”  
   
Oh. Oh well, that means… well, it means a lot of things but because he doesn’t really want to get into what _exactly_ it means, he concentrates on the obvious. With a frown, he asks them, “You haven’t told the General yet?”  
   
Before Jenna can answer anything, Matt beats her to it, snorting, “Do I have a death wish?”  
   
It elicits a stern and not really amused, “Matt!” from Jenna and he flashes her a grin that probably melts a dozen hearts each time he does it around crowds. Obviously, though, constant exposure to it hardens oneself against it since Jenna simply glares at him, even forgetting to continue chopping her vegetables.  
   
After a little staring contest, Matt makes a face and mutters, “Well, _do_ I?”  
   
He knows he shouldn’t say but… it’s just too tempting. “Still afraid of the General, Matt?”  
   
Interesting reactions, from both of them. Jenna looks very much like she has _no_ idea what this is about but would very much like to know, preferably from _Matt_ and the officer in question looks a bit like he feels… betrayed? But yeah, he really tries to pull himself together, answering like a shot, “Nossir.”  
   
He’d very obviously like to have this over with but Jenna seems to be very much interested in this, asking “You were afraid of my father?” Oh, Matthew Kemp absolutely was afraid of Jonathan Wells, he can attest to that. Said little conversation in the Academy’s catholic chapel is still very much present in his mind.    
   
Matthew Kemp doesn’t seem to agree, though. “I just said _no_ , I _wasn’t_?”  
   
Damn, Matt really makes it way too easy for him. Trying to sound casual instead of just _this_ short from snorting, he says, “Didn’t sound like it to me.”  
   
Looking a little like he feels betrayed, Matt resolutely grabs his knife and resumes cutting the meat with the words, “We’ll go back to _cooking_ now and that’s final.” It makes Jenna roll her eyes and he can’t help smirk a little. He’s pretty sure there are some rather serious reasons for only Mrs. Wells knowing that there’s a grandchild on the way but they seem to have learned to cope with serious reasons and that’s probably more than he can say of himself.  
   
So they do go back to cooking and because he’s genuinely interested and because he just knows that with the Kemps there’s always a bigger story behind everything he ventures to ask, “How’d you learn about it?”  
   
Before Jenna can say anything, Matt has looked up from the meat he just put in a pan and says with a grin, “That’s actually kind of a funny story…”  
   
“No, it’s not,” she interrupts him immediately and glares at him and well, didn’t he say there’s always a bigger story behind everything here?  
   
Expertly keeping the meat from burning without even looking at it, Matt returns her look and contradicts her, still grinning, “Yes, it is.”  
   
There’s a moment where they lock eyes and seem to haven forgotten that there’s a third person in the room and he isn't quite sure what’s going to follow next but then Jenna just sticks out her tongue and mumbles, “Greta was blowing it totally out of proportion.”  
   
He raises his eyebrow. “Greta?”  
   
Apparently, that reminded them of his presence and Matt returns to the meat, explaining, “Her cousin.” Ah, right, yes, he thinks he remembers her from their wedding and wondering about how she could be related in any way to _Jenna_ , being very obviously very different from her. Matt, however isn't finished with his explanation and since he’d really like to hear the story, he doesn’t interrupt again. “When she learned about the pregnancy, I was over at Nellis for Red Flag and she didn’t tell me until I came back. Actually, she just said…”  
   
“It’s totally irrelevant what I said. Or how I learned about the damn pregnancy.” Read: it’s probably one of the most interesting stories they have to tell tonight. Hopefully, Matt doesn’t agree with Jenna.  
   
“Not the way Greta told it.” Ah, very good. That’s what he was hoping Matt would say.  
   
“What did she say?” he asks and… he probably lost a little of his standing with Jenna. But you know, he’s not picking sides here. There’s only one side he serves and that’s his interest in the story. It’s been a while since he could enjoy simply talking to friends and he’s determined to make the most of it.  
   
“Well,” Matt says and grins confidentially, pretending Jenna isn’t standing beside him with a frown on her face and a very sharp knife in her hand, “she started like this: “so Jenna was puking her _guts_ out”…”  
   
“I was _not_ puking my guts out!” Indignation is written quite clearly over Jenna’s face but Matt seems rather unimpressed.  
   
“Yes, you were. You still _are_ ,” he says, _trying_ to sound casual but he’s not quite sure if there wasn’t something else in it, as well.  
   
“No, I’m…” And suddenly righteous annoyance is replaced with that telltale paleness and slightly pained look he remembers from his sister’s face during the early stages of her second pregnancy and she swallows sharply before mumbling, “Just… excuse me, I gotta… I’ll be back… in… excuse me,” and she’s gone, nearly _dashing_ away a little undignified. Oh.  
   
Matt, however, manages to look like he thinks sympathy is overrated and even calls after her, “See, I _told_ you!”  
   
He finds that a little cruel… until he hears her calling “ _Fuck_ you!” from the presumed direction of the bathroom  
   
Well. Not exactly the vocabulary you’d expect from an Air Force wife but quite honestly… even though he knows that her mother is quite well known as The Perfect Air Force Wife he never really expected Jenna to follow her example. But that _was_ a little harsh, even for her. He raises his eyebrows and gestures to the general direction she disappeared into. “She okay?”  
   
“Oh, she will be in a couple of minutes,” Matt just says casually but he thinks he detected a hint of worry in the short look up from the vegetables in the pan and the rice in one of the pots. Well, with that kind of history… he’d probably be worried as well. Determined to keep everything light, though, Matt continues, “Anyway… where were we?”  
   
Oh well. If he doesn’t want to talk about being worried then they won’t talk about being worried. He kind of smirks again. “Your lovely wife was puking her guts out.”  
   
Matt nods. “That’s what her cousin told me, yes. For two weeks, every morning. Every. _Morning_. Well, and apparently, a couple of other times during the day as well. And she was still convinced it was the flu.”  
   
He shrugs. “It could have been.”  
   
Snorting now. “Not bloody likely.” Oh okay, of course it wasn’t likely. But yeah… they’re talking about _Jenna_ here. “Anyway, her cousin said that she got a little fed up with it and she asked her if she wouldn’t at least _consider_ talking to her OB. And you know what she said?”  
   
“No, but I’m sure you’re gonna tell me,” he replies and it’s a little funny how Matt looks like he thinks he doesn’t pay the story the attention it deserves.  
   
“I was getting to that,” is the slightly testy answer before he finally does get to it. “So what Jenna apparently said was, her cousin swore, ‘whatever _for_?’”  
   
Jesus Christ. He snorts and shakes his head a little disbelievingly. “You’re kidding me.” Because seriously… Jenna Kemp nee Wells is one of the most generally oblivious persons he ever knew, including Thomas Moore, The Powers That Be rest his soul, but _that_ takes the cake.  
   
As if he still can’t believe it himself, Matt shakes his head as well while arranging what looks like dinner on three plates. “No, that’s what she said. Greta said Jenna looked at her like she thought she’d lost it and asked her “whatever for?” she should contact her OB. After two weeks of morning sickness.”  
   
Before he can answer, Jenna comes brushing past him and has given Matt a little shove to the shoulder. “Are you still trying to make me look stupid, Captain Eager Beaver?”  
   
There’s a grin from Matt and a kiss that makes him concentrate on picking up a plate when Matt says, “No one can make _you_ look stupid, Miss NASA Employee of the Month.”  
   
A derisive snort now and then it’s sitting down for dinner. “Flattery will get you nowhere,” Jenna states and he isn't quite sure if that isn't a bit of a lie.  
   
And Matt apparently knows it better, dares saying “That’s not what you said when I…”  
   
“Matt! We have a _guest_.” Is that genuine horrification he just heard there? Smothering a smirk he pretends that his attention is solely on his food. There’s a little stab of wistfulness because he would have loved to have Laura with him… and because he misses having that kind of conversation with Laura so very much but it’s still very much amusing. It even also gets better. “Please excuse him, Evan. I think some stupid military experiment went wrong and took away all his brains.”  
   
Mh. Way too good groundwork to waste it. Raising his eyebrow he can’t resist asking, “It needed an experiment for that?” Ah yeah. She grins triumphantly and for some reason it makes him pretty much smug that he scored some points with quick witted, acerbic and indeed lovely Jenna Kemp. He stores that away as a success on his way towards regaining at least a little of the man he used to be before.  
   
For the rest of the evening, he continues interjecting asides whenever he feels the need for it, even tells them a bit about what’s going on at the SGC but mostly, he feels content with just spending it watching the Kemps banter back and forth and enjoying it immensely and being disgustingly happy with each other.  
   
The realization that all those terrible things that happened in Pegasus and even after also had _some_ good results after all hits him halfway through being witness to a passionate debate about whether NASA test pilots or F-35 pilots are the bigger idiots and he can’t help wondering if Jenna and Matt would have what they’re having now and if they’d be as happy as they’re now if things had turned out less gruesome.  
   
Yes, he misses Laura and next time he visits her grave, he’ll probably tell her about this but… maybe with a grin instead of a bitter frown. He knows it’s stupid because she’s dead and everything but… she used to love gossip so much and sharing it on her grave helps him working against the fear of forgetting her and this would be one of the stories she’d absorb with rapt attention and reward with hearty laughter.  
   
She’d never let Jenna live the whole “Whatever for?” thing down and she’d endlessly tease Matt with being twisted around Jenna’s little finger… and well… if she isn't here to do that… it’s probably _his_ job now to do it and he always does his job the best way he can… so he will do exactly _that_ whenever he’s in the mood for it. And he very much is tonight so in the end he’s glad he came here after all. It’s a start, at least.

 


	3. All of my Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evan Lorne is fed up with his sister trying to make him move on from his late wife, Captain Laura Cadman-Lorne.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I remember this one being surprisingly sad for me, but then again almost every _Defining Moments_ piece made me sad while writing it (yes, I cried at my own stories. _What_?). So, uh, yeah, with the exception of maybe the first two, all _Defining Moments_ are rather sad and... oh, you'll see what I mean.

** Defining Moments: All Of My Heart **

_ “I would have given you all of my heart  
but there's someone who's torn it apart  
and she's taking almost all that I've got  
but if you want, I'll try to love again  
baby I'll try to love again but I know _

__

_ The first cut is the deepest, baby I know  
The first cut is the deepest.” _

__

_ Cat Stevens, “The First Cut Is The Deepest” _

“Hey,” Anna says, trying to sound casual, “you’re wearing your ring again. How come?” His first impulse is to tell her that he really doesn’t want to talk about it but then again… she’s his sister and she wouldn’t let it go anyway. 

So all he does is sigh and say, “Didn’t see sense in not wearing it anymore.” He hopes she’ll leave it at that but apparently he actually achieved the opposite and made her interested again.

Realizing that there’s a bigger story behind his taking up the habit of wearing his wedding band again after he finally decided to take it off a year ago – it had been seven years since Laura died, after all – Anna shakes her head and takes a sip of her coffee. He’s prepared for her trying to wheedle it out of him… but he’s _not_ prepared for her doing her mind-reading thing again. “You broke up with Christine, didn’t you?” 

It’s not so much the question in itself that’s bothering him but rather the slightly disappointed and worried undertone Anna added to it. He knows she’d been hoping he’d finally let another woman into his life, maybe even let her take away at least a little of the pain Laura’s death caused him… and for a while he had managed to make himself believe so as well. But just as lies go… you always had to face the truth eventually. So all he does is shrug his shoulders and tell her a little gruffly, “It just didn’t work out.”

Hopefully that will tell her enough to quit asking about it because in truth there had been a little more to it than just an incompatible taste in movies or toothpaste in the sink. “What happened?”

Yeah, right, that had to be expected. He starts to feel uncomfortable; vulnerable because he’s not used to discuss his private life in public places. They’re sitting in a café close to the Pentagon because he’s in D.C. for a conference and she would have probably killed him if he hadn’t given her a call. So he shifts a little and murmurs, “We disagreed on too many things. Listen, Anna, could we please just…”

“What. Happened?” Dammit. She will _not_ make him tell her about the day Christine had decided she’d gotten fed up with him avoiding bringing her to his place and showed up on his doorstep quite unexpectedly. She _definitely_ will not… because if he tells her that he managed to keep Christine away from his place for almost a year she’ll probably declare him a nutcase once and for all.

He presses his lips together and then nearly grinds out, “Like I told you. It just didn’t work out. End of story.” Because, in the end, that _is_ the truth, even if it’s extremely simplified. It’s not like he hadn't _tried_ – he’d figured that he owed it to Laura because he _had_ kind of promised her on her grave he wouldn’t chase away every woman who was remotely interested in him just because he felt obliged to his dead wife – but the moment Christine had started quizzing him on the pictures of Laura sitting on his mantelpiece after she’d simply brushed past him into the living room, he’d known he’d been lying… both to Christine and to himself, right from the beginning. 

“But… you two seemed to… you know, click,” Anna says, sounding genuinely confused and a little put off. 

Yeah, he’d thought that, too. Or at least he’d hoped it would work like that some day in the future. But the way she’d gone on questioning him and hadn't really realized that talking about Laura had been painful for him… it had told him she’d never… _understand_. And it had told him that he didn’t even _want_ her to understand. A little helplessly, he shrugs. “I thought so too for a while. But we didn’t. So could we _please_ …”

“Evan…” Anna says, shaking her head and he gets the bad feeling she has seen through all his pretenses, “I know I said it before but… really, you have to let her _go_.”

He so did _not_ want to hear _that_. He’s… fed up with everyone trying to tell him what he has to do or not to do. It’s _his_ life, dammit, so he frowns at her and has a hard time keeping his voice level. “Don’t you think I tried?” Crap, now his voice is breaking and he needs to take a deep breath to get a grip on himself. “For eight years, I tried, Anna. Eight fucking years. I’m _done_ trying.” 

Exasperatedly he runs a hand over his face and suddenly the whole setting – the café, all the people buzzing around them – seems to make it impossible for him to breathe and without preamble he gets up and leaves Anna sitting at their table, dumbfounded. He needs to walk a few steps and trying very hard not to breathe in gasps he sits down on a bench a few yards away from the café. With his head in his hands he sits there, doing his best to keep from breaking down in public. 

After a while of working on controlling his breathing with a few exercises Teyla taught him a seeming eternity ago, he hears Anna beside him say, “Evan, I’m sorry… but I just… Look, don’t you see you’re denying yourself a chance to be happy?” 

Taking heart he forces himself to look up again. Anna looks very serious and worried and it touches him. She’s been his anchor in the eight years since Laura died and she deserves that he gets a fucking grip on himself. But that doesn’t mean he won’t tell her the harsh truth. “I _was_ happy, Anna. And it’s never gonna be like that again.” With a startling clarity… he sees that now. Just like he saw that no matter if he took off his ring or not, he’ll always be married to Laura – and _only_ Laura – shortly before he’d made breaking up with Christine final. 

Anna, though… is not one to give up easily. “But don’t you think… you could be happy in a different _way_?”

Instead of answering her right away… he opts for another strategy. “You know how the day before Laura died went?” That… was a risky move because there had been a fucking _reason_ he never talked to _anyone_ about his married life with Laura. But he just has the feeling that right now is the moment he _has_ to do it. 

So he continues, haltingly and in a very low voice at first, “I… woke up to her off-key singing in the shower and the sun in my face. Didn't get up for a while and she came back into the bedroom, determined to wake up Major Sleeping Beauty. It was... a very rare spare day so we didn't... feel in a hurry to leave the bedroom anytime soon.” At that, he risks a glance to Anna and to his surprise, she simply gives him an amused half-grin and he can’t help joining her for a brief moment. 

But then he goes on, his voice a little stronger now. “When we finally did, I took her to... a rather remote part of the base to finish a painting I'd started ages ago. She just sat there and watched me and I can still hear her voice reading _Little Women_ to me and telling me it would be the second book she'd read to our children, right after _The Princess Bride_.” 

Here… he has to stop, needing seemingly forever and a day and at least three attempts to finish with one simple sentence, “I never... I never finished that painting.” So no, I don’t think I could be happy in _any_ other way, he wants to add but his voice doesn’t let him because it seems to have deserted him.

For a while… neither of them says or does anything but then Anna moves to take his hand and squeezes it, silently holding on to him for another little eternity. In the end, the words she finds are, “I just… don’t want you to be… all by yourself and… lonely.” 

Smiling a sad little smile, he moves to grip her hand and squeeze it in return. “It’s okay, Anna, really. Look… I’ve got you and Charlie and the boys… mom, dad… friends, co-workers… I’m neither all by myself nor lonely. It’s just that… I simply realized I need to accept that there will never be another woman for me and that I just should stop forcing myself to do something I neither can nor want to do.” Even though he still feels a little like failing Laura ever since he came to that resolution… but it’s really the only thing he can do.

Anna takes her time with her answer and for a moment it looks like she’ll make one last attempt at trying to convince him otherwise but then it looks like that little simple open-hearted confession did more to convince her than all the heated arguments and stone-walled silence from all the years before. “Just… promise me you won’t turn away from _us_. _Ever_.” 

Okay… okay, yeah, he can do _that_. He lets go off her hand and nods, a little defeated. “Promise.”

She grins a little, relief shining through. “Cross your heart and hope to die?” 

Not able to resist a sigh, he assures her, “Cross my heart and hope to die.” 

Obviously satisfied by his half-solemn promise, she gets up, determined to leave the gloomy conversation behind her… for now, at least. “So… you got anything planned for today?” 

Somehow glad that she accepted his unwillingness to talk about this any longer and his need for some time to come to terms with all his realizations, he joins her in trying to pretend the whole conversation from before had never happened. “I’m gonna meet Matt and Jenna for dinner but until then… I’m free. Got any interesting ideas?”

“Actually… yeah.” She grins and it doesn’t bode well… but anything is better than dwelling on Christine and Laura and the ring that’s in its rightful place again… because he may have failed Laura in finding a woman to share his life with but he certainly won’t fail her in _living_. He just _knows_ she’d want him to smile once in a while and be with people he loves and he’s determined to fulfill that part of his silent agreement with her, at least. So he lets Anna drag him along and the sting he feels when she talks about _her_ married life is not as bad as it usually is. Maybe… maybe one day things just will fall in place again and he’ll get that big chance to… to _right_ things the universe damn well owes him. It’s been about time for that for quite a while already now. 


	4. Never Gonna Say Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evan Lorne is back, to tell us about the moment he realized something fundamental about himself, eight years after his wife's death.

** Never Gonna Say Again **

 

 _“Now I'm dancing with a broken heart_ _  
Ain't no doctor who can make it start  
These are the words that I'm never gonna say again.”_

 _James Blunt, “These are the Words”_

 

Whoever just rang on his door will have to go home empty-handed. It’s his sole day off this week and he’s not in the mood to see anyone, not even…not even his current girlfriend, Christine. It’s been a bad week for his team so far and he needs nothing more than a couple of hours alone on his roof terrace with a book and just the sky above him. Ever since leaving Atlantis… there are those days when he can’t bear walls around him and a roof over his head, time and again.

 

However, there’s another ringing keeping him from picking up his stuff and simply heading up the stairs and despite knowing better, he sighs and puts down the book and the beer at the third ring and kind of drags himself to the door. After all, he knows there’s no such thing as privacy or spare time for a Lieutenant Colonel at the SGC.

 

Then he opens the door and… regrets it immediately. Okay, and that… immediately makes him feel guilty. The person in front of him… is Christine. She’s… smiling at him, a tray with some cupcakes in her hand and a look of pleasant anticipation on her face. And the only thing he feels is… annoyance. Not a good thing, he knows that, so he tries to ignore it.

 

When he doesn’t say anything, Christine takes it upon herself to kick off a conversation, “So, I just realized we’ve been going steady for almost a year now and… you never asked me to your home. I thought I really should change that.”

 

His first reaction is an inward groan. Why… _why_ did she have to do that, he wonders, getting more annoyed by the minute. It was going so well between them. Nice, casual, calm. No dramatics, or at least none mentionable. They’re both in their forties, have had a couple of relationships… Christine is divorced from a soldier so she knew what she was getting herself into and hey, they really got along well. And now she ruined it all.

 

“Well… aren’t you going to ask me in?” _No_ , he wants to answer her but she doesn’t even wait, just brushes past him into the living room, over to the kitchen counter. Resolutely, she puts down the cupcakes on the counter and moves to look for… something in his kitchen. As if she’s been here a dozen times before.

 

It finally shakes him up enough that he can at least mutter a little lamely, “Christine…”

 

“What?” She looks up, somehow reminding him of Laura with that absolutely undisturbed look on her face and suddenly, for the first time ever since he has known her, it bothers him immensely to see something of Laura in her. It never did before because he always knew that she had a few personality traits that Laura also had had but he always knew that she wasn’t _like_ Laura. But right now… for some reason, he can’t stand to see it.

 

He moves his fingers, tries to find the right words… and ends up with, “I don’t think this was a good idea.”

 

That… was apparently _not_ the right thing to say because she looks kind of confused… and irritated. “Evan… we’ve been together for almost a year now. Yes, I do think that it was a good idea to come by… since you never invited me.”

 

Well, he wants to spit, there was a _reason_ for that but… he realizes that it’s probably not the best idea. Resisting the temptation to rub his neck and look away from her so she doesn’t see the guilt flaring up – because, after all, she’s _right_ with her accusations – he says, “That’s… you’re… you’re right. Of course you’re right.” She seems to relax a little and so he adds, “It’s just that… it’s not… a good day. For me.”

 

She crosses her arms in front of her chest. “I… can see that. But lately… it’s _never_ been a good day for you. What’s going on, Evan?” Well, the thing is, his team got run over by a tank, quite literally, just two days ago and now his sniper is on convalescent leave for at least two weeks, among other things. But the thing also is that the SGC still isn't public and after the fiasco in Atlantis will probably never be and well, a social worker employed by the city council of Colorado Springs just doesn’t have enough security clearance for even taking that last exit before the Mountain.

 

He shakes his head. “Christine, you _know_ that I can’t…”

 

“Can’t or _won’t_ , Evan?” Well, that’s a good question… but apparently, it was just rhetorical  because she also shakes her head… and then stops, looking as if she’s looking right through him. She rounds the counter, comes walking over to him… _past_ him… up to the fireplace. All of a sudden… the sketch he made of Laura is in her hand. Almost accusingly she holds it up and looks at him. “Who’s that?” For a moment, the question makes him speechless. Actually, it chokes him up and ties his tongue into tight little knots.

 

Then, the only thing he can utter in a raspy whisper is, “My wife.”

 

Christine is silent for a moment and he can see it working in her head. Then, “What the _hell_? You’re _married_? And you never actually had the guts to _tell_ me? What kind of officer are you? One of those guys leading a double or a triple life, one girl on every base, so that he…”

 

“I’m widowed, Christine,” it quietly slips from his lips and it shuts her up pretty effectively. That is, until she starts talking again and all of a sudden… everything about her is grating on his nerves, even though he knows it’s unfair.

 

“You never talk about her,” she says, her brows knitted in confusion. “I mean, where did you…” now she picks up the picture of Laura in her Class A’s, “She was a soldier?”

 

Feeling the muscles in the back of his neck tense, he nods a little stiffly. “A Marine. We served together.”

 

Christine puts the picture away, takes up the one that shows Laura laughing on one of he beaches on the mainland back when things weren’t half as bad as they’d become in the end. She takes a short look at the picture, frowns, then asks with a slightly sarcastic undertone, “In that highly secret hush-hush thing you never talk about either?”

 

Yes, he wants to say, that’s where I served with Laura. That’s where I _lost_ her and could you please stop touching her pictures because I can’t stand the sight of you looking at her like the stranger she is to you? That’s what he wants to say, so when he sees Christine reaching for the wedding picture all he manages is a simple, controlled, “I think it’s better if you leave now.”

 

“But I just want to…” He shakes his head.

 

“I _don’t_ , Christine.” Her hand freezes mid-air and she turns to him again, looking… _hurt_ and he really does feel sorry for her but he feels a lot of bad stuff coming up again and protecting himself… and _Laura_ … is all that matters right now, and yes, he also kind of feels ashamed for that.

 

Then she can shake the hurt off it seems and actually rolls her eyes. But she doesn’t touch any of the pictures again. For now. “Oh come on, that was what… eight years ago? You can’t seriously…”

 

“Yes, I _can_.” Because he’s starting to get angry. Doesn’t she _see_ it? “And I _will_. Please just _go_.”  

 

Something… in his tone that’s almost pleading because he really isn't sure for how much longer he can take all this – her in his home, the fact that a neatly built house of neatly wrapped up little lies just got some major cracks in its wall, the whirlwind of guilt and shame when realizing that all his efforts to make it _work_ with Christine were in vain – seems to finally make her see that he’s not in the shape to discuss things right here and now. Slowly she nods. “Alright. I’ll… I’ll call you?”

 

He struggles to take a deep breath and shake his head again, feeling himself relax a little at the realization that Christine just agreed to leave. Trying to soften his voice, to make it sound less stinging, he says, “No, I’ll call _you_.”

 

For a moment, there’s hope in Christine’s eyes that maybe this was just a minor set-back and that after a few bumps in the road they’ll get back on course… but he can see the exact moment she realizes that no… they both probably have neither the strength nor the will to get over any obstacles in their way together. She starts to say something but ends it with, “Oh. Oh, okay. Well… uh… I’ll just…”

 

He nods, forces his legs to move to make the effort to see her out. He wants to reach out and politely open the door for her but she does so herself, walks out… and turns around again, trying a little smile. “I’ll… we’ll…” the little smile turns into a _sad_ little smile and it looks a little like she knew something like this could happen, “I really liked you, Evan.”

 

For some reason… for a moment… he feels relief. Because he can see that “like” is not another word for “love” for her. She really did mean that she _liked_ him. It’s feels a little unfair to be _relieved_ about it… but he’s also relieved about being able to say the truth when telling her, “Yeah, I liked you, too,” with a sad little smile of his own. He really did. Still does, actually, despite everything. Which is why he says, “I’m… sorry, Christine. For… everything.”

 

He hopes she sees that he’s honest about it, that he really _is_ sorry it didn’t work out, for a myriad of reasons… only now realizing that… this… was a break-up. It seems she realized it, too and he can see the hurt in her face again when she replies, “Yeah, I’m sorry, too, Evan.”

 

For a very short moment, he wants to take back everything, tell her he didn’t mean it and that they can talk about everything, work their way through this… but his gaze falls on his left ring finger that looks so empty, did so ever since he took off his ring shortly before meeting Christine on one of the school visits his team sometimes does and then on the woman who was supposed to be a new start for him… and he finally realizes and _accepts_ that the experiment went wrong and that it’s better for _both_ of them if they stop it right fucking now.

 

So he simply nods and lets her turn around and walk away and he’s not even sure if he will call her again or if that was it. He probably should but… what would it change? What would it make better? He already told her he was sorry and even if he told her again, he could never explain to her _why_ and what he was sorry _for_ because the words for that still seem to be firmly lodged in his throat, even after all those years so when he shuts the door… he most probably shuts it on them forever.

 

Slowly, he walks over to his couch, sits down, his face in his hand. He’s sitting like that for what seems like an eternity, unable to grasp the thoughts running through his head. He just knows that something significant just happened, something that went beyond breaking up.

 

With that thought in his mind, he gets up, not quite sure what to do or where to go for another moment… until his feet walk over to his desk nearly by themselves and he finds himself opening one of the drawers… and there they are. Simple white gold – or the Pegasus equivalent of it – no stones or inscriptions. Just two weddings bands, one smaller than the other. He takes the one that’s his and slowly turns it over between his fingers.

 

Standing there, his wedding band held between two fingers, he thinks about the day he married Laura and about the day he lost her and about the day that was Jennifer Keller-McKay’s funeral. About the day Matthew Kemp had married Jenna Wells and the day Will Meyers called him to tell him about the miracle of his wife becoming pregnant years after every doctor they knew had told them they’d never have children. About the day his nephew Felix ruined his shoulder so badly that he would never be admitted to the Air Force Academy and the day Rodney McKay called him his friend in an aside and in earnest.

 

He thinks about all the days he had wanted Laura so badly by his side that it sometimes had caused him a physical ache, deep down in his chest, as if there was a knot there, unbearably tight and ready to burst any moment. Even… even when Christine had been there. In the end, it had always been _Laura_ he’d longed to be able to call from the SGC or talk to over dinner about whatever news he’d learned. So he doesn’t hesitate anymore, just slips the ring back on his finger and it just feels so… _good_.

 

Because, and that’s both frightening and liberating, he finally realized that she’ll _always_ be the one he’ll want to share things with first and whose voice he wants to hear singing in the shower in the morning and who he wants to wait for him at the gate when coming home from deployment – or who _he_ ’d want to wait for at _any_ airport’s gate.

 

There’s something inside of him that will never quite heal and that will always fill him with a cutting longing when someone tells him about a marriage or a birth or funeral of someone he knows and maybe there will be even days when he feels that pain when he hears the damn weather report on the radio because they’ll say that it’ll be a rainy and windy day, just like those on Lake Michigan that she used to love… but somehow he doesn’t think he’ll mind it much anymore.

 

In fact… he’ll welcome it because it’ll always remind him of her, just like that ring on his finger and he doesn’t _want_ to forget her or the joy that she brought him… not even the _pain_ that she – or rather her death – brought him. He knows what happened was unfair to Christine because she’s a great person, so full of life and sometimes not unlike Laura but the point is… she’s not _Laura_ and she’ll never be and it would be even more unfair to try to make himself and her believe that he doesn’t want anyone else besides Laura.

 

He really wishes he could have talked to Christine today, like she deserved but… he’s not ready for it now and he’ll probably never be. It’s not Christine’s fault, though, and he’ll make sure to tell her that some day, tell her how great she is and that she deserves someone who can love _her_ , doesn’t try to make himself forget about his dead wife with her. And that he never wanted to deceive her with not telling her about Laura.

 

Apart from those who were _there_ and Anna and Laura’s parents there’s _no one_ who knows what happened back in Pegasus. They saw the ring on his finger when he still wore it but they never asked and he was glad about that. Hopefully… they won’t start asking _now_.

 

But even if they did… he’d just shrug and they’d stop asking because they always do when he shrugs and ignores their questions. Okay… Anna will ask when he sees her in D.C. next week and Jenna and Matt will probably ask as well when he has dinner with them the same week… and maybe they’ll get an answer.

 

Oh well. Anna probably will because she never stops until she _has_ her answer but at least Jenna and Matt had – and maybe still have – enough of their own demons to know when to ask and when to keep quiet. He’s thankful for that and maybe he’ll even tell them some day.

 

He moves the ring on his finger again and something like a half smile crosses his face. Well. Now that he admitted a couple of things to himself… somehow some things seem to be a lot clearer to him. Some are embarrassing; like realizing what an _idiot_ he’d been with lying to Christine and to himself. Some are painful; like knowing he’ll never have what a lot of other people he knows and cares about have.

 

But some are also relieving; like realizing that accepting that Laura will always be the only one for him was a lot easier and a lot less painful than he ever thought it would be. _All_ of that, though, mostly makes him hope that now that he saw all of this, things can only get better, at least a little bit. That’s all he wants and all he needs, for now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I remember this was a little hard to write because I felt so sorry about the both of them and because I struggled not to demonize Christine or make her look like a stupid bitch without any understanding of why Evan is the way he is. I hope I didn't completely fail in that.


	5. Time Keeps Burning On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evan Lorne finds himself in a position to bestow his wisdom on a young officer in need, five years after leaving Atlantis.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This takes play three years prior to _Some Brand New Luck_ , _All of my Heart_ and _Never Gonna Say Again_ , so five years after Laura died and Evan left Atlantis. Again, I'd like to thank **-leah** for lending Matthew Kemp to me (and Jenna Wells, in extension). I wish you could all read her Team kemp stories :)

 

 ** Defining Moments: Time Keeps Burning On **   


_ “Time keeps burning  
The wheels keep on turning  
Sometimes I feel I'm wasting my days  
How I miss you and I just want to kiss you  
And I'm gonna love you till my dying day  
How these days grow long  
Time keeps burning on  
How these days grow long.” _

_Brandy Carlile, "Dying Day"_

He knew he shouldn’t have come here. The moment he’d opened the envelope and seen the graceful writing on the fine hand-made paper he’d known he shouldn’t have come. But then again… there aren’t many people left from his time in Atlantis he still has contact with – in fact, he can count them all on one hand – and it would be really bad style if he’d missed that event… and Laura would have found it exciting, to say the least.   


So when he’d read that “Major General and Mrs. Jonathan Franklin Wells requested the honor of his presence at the marriage of their daughter Jenna Margaret to Matthew Daniel Kemp, Captain, United States Air Force” he’d sighed and given them his R.S.V.P. for the reception. Which is why he now finds himself sitting in the chapel of the Air Force Academy, surrounded by other flag officers invited to the Wells wedding and he feels so very much out of place that it’s not even funny anymore.   


It’s not the fact that most of them are way older than he is or work in completely different fields or are acquainted with General Wells, not Captain Kemp, like he is… no, the thing that really bothers him almost to being downright miserable is that… they’re all here with their wives. Without even really wanting to, his gaze wanders to his left hand where he’s still wearing his wedding band and he can’t help twisting it.    


Anna would tell him that it’s been over five years now and that he _promised_ her he would let Laura go, back when he visited her grave shortly before his promotion to Lieutenant Colonel… but it’s proven hard – _too_ hard. And so the pain of seeing all the other officers with their wives, or Kemp’s young Best Man and ushers who still have the exuberance of soldiers who have never seen what real war looks like flirting with Wells’ bridesmaids and _not_ having Laura here to laugh and backbite about them is as fresh as it would have been five years ago.    


Holy crap, he honestly should just _go_ , even if that meant disappointing both Wells and Kemp – who seemed pretty surprised to actually see him appear here – and incurring the General’s wrath… _again_. The thought of seeing two members of the Atlantis expedition – who were, at the time they were both still in Atlantis, CO and XO of an off-world team – getting married makes him feel almost nauseous because it reminds him so very much of his _own_ wedding.    


So yes, that had been in Atlantis, much less formal and practically between one mission and the next… but Laura _had_ been a member of his team for a while and they’d both been officers… and it had been mostly due to General Wells’ intervention that he hadn't been allowed to bury Laura either close to himself or her parents. As head of Human Resources, the General hadn't been exactly happy about their decision to marry without waiting for the permission from the brass and he still remembers a rather frosty e-mail by the General essentially telling him he was quite disappointed that two officers so highly respectable, capable and responsible could do something so _stupid_.   


When they’d still been in Atlantis, Samantha Carter had taken the brunt of the General’s reaction and he still suspects that she even enlisted General O’Neill’s help in making dealing with him easier but when he’d come back… old Wells had told him politely but in no uncertain terms that the only reason they didn’t fire him or transfer him to some outpost in the middle of nowhere but had let him stay in the SGC had been his nearly inhuman efforts to hold Atlantis together until almost the end.    


And now Jenna Wells and Matthew Kemp of all people are getting married… Laura would _love_ the irony of that. Jenna Wells and Matthew Kemp who could never stop arguing with each other, even after Wells had been back from her little stint on Earth due to Kemp’s incessant nagging of everyone who could be remotely close to helping them… and after the other two of the team – Jason Ferrier and Adam Faraday – had died on a mission.    


He remembers that how seeing steadfast Kemp and sassy Wells far beside themselves with grief had made it difficult for him to stay on course but at least back then he still had had Laura and in hindsight, that had made everything easier to bear somehow. It had… it had also been Laura who’d suggested to him to tell Kemp to send Wells home at least, if he couldn’t send home _both_ of them. Everyone had seen how miserable Wells had been and how miserable that had made _Kemp_ … and maybe part of the motivation to make Kemp send her home had been to make up for not being able to send _Laura_ home.   


_ Goddammit _ , what the hell is he _doing_ here? And where, in the name of aforementioned deity, is the damned _groom_? He’s pretty sure that Kemp should have been here _ages_ ago because the state his Best Man and ushers are in – they do remind him more of a flock of panicked chickens than highly trained fighter pilots – and the strained look on General Wells’ face when he had emerged from the room where his daughter is most probably waiting spoke very clearly.    


He really strains not to get too impatient but he also gets a little fed up of Kemp’s friends and their apparent inability to find either Kemp or his father… and starts to get an inkling of an idea what… might be wrong. So when the Best Man rushes past him wondering for the umpteenth time where “that idiot Kemp” is, he makes a decision and gets up. Frowning he walks over to the gaggle of young pilots standing around clueless and clears his throat.    


At first they don’t hear him but when he gives them a short nearly growled, “Gentlemen,” their heads turn and upon seeing his rank insignia they all straighten up a little.    


The Best Man clears his throats and utters a little flustered, “Sir?” Jeez… working with professionals just _once_ would be nice.   


“I used to be Captain Kemp’s commanding officer a few years ago.” At first there’s only incomprehension in their faces but then recognition slowly dawns. At least they’re intelligent enough to draw a connection between him and the classified assignment Kemp was on before he joined their unit. He uses that moment to add, “I suggest you let me handle this.”    


The Best Man attempts to say, “Sir, I really don’t think…” but one of those glares Laura always claimed would instill fear in anyone but her silences him quickly.   


“Just keep the audience quiet for a little longer, Captain.” He expects further resistance but apparently the relief that someone just took over makes them tame enough that they all simply nod so he leaves the main hall, to get away from the crowd that slowly becomes nervous. He needs a quiet place to think, trying to figure out where Kemp might have disappeared to and finds himself wandering in the direction of the catholic part of the chapel… Oh, right.    


Realizing he might be on the right track, he quickens his pace until he reaches the door of the rather secluded room. Remembering his manners, he allows for a knock and when – quite surprisingly – Kemp’s voice answer from the inside to call him, he opens the door. And lo and behold… there are the groom and his father.    


Both look a little strained, and Kemp in particular. Quite out of nowhere, he remembers how he’d stood in front of the mirror on his own wedding day, just before Meyers had come to collect him. All the thoughts that had run through his mind… and the unerring certainty that he’d rather die than let anything happen to Laura. His hands turn into fists as he fights to force the pain at that thought back into the deepest recesses of his heart.    


It irritates him that he actually has to clear his throat before he says, “I hope I’m not intruding, Captain but it seems like… you’re causing quite the commotion.” He even adds a smirk for good measure and has the feeling that it’s not quite the smirk that Laura fell in love with anymore. He turned too bitter for that five years ago.   


Kemp runs a hand through his hair and it looks very much like it was shaking. “I know, sir. I’m sorry; I’ll be done in a few. I just…”   


He exchanges a short glance with the man he takes to be Kemp’s father and the look he gives him speaks volumes. Someone is having a _very_ bad case of pre-wedding jitters. His first impulse is to simply turn around and leave them alone, in a desperate attempt to keep the memories of his own wedding day at bay but then it _almost_ feels like Laura just whacked him over the head and he reminds himself of the fact that Kemp used to be one of his most trusted officers and that he was one of the very few people still willing to put up with him after the devastating events that resulted in Laura’s death. And that right now he’s a young officer desperately in need of some advice.   


“Relax, Captain. It’s not like a lot of people there haven’t been where you’re now.” Another exchange of glances with Kemp’s father and when he involuntarily touches his wedding band again there’s also silent understanding.    


And then, to his surprise, Kemp’s father clears his throat and says, “Matt… I just remembered I need to check the seating arrangements again. We really don’t want the General to get mad because one of his buddies is sitting beside one of your mother’s pacifist friends.” With that… he simply hastens out of the room… and leaves him alone with Kemp.   


He’s tempted again to just leave but Kemp still looks a little out of sorts, so he heaves a silent sigh, closes the door and walks up to the young officer.  “Captain… you really should be out there by now, don’t you think?”    


Contritely, Kemp nods. “Yeah, well…”    


And suddenly it dawns on him what could be the problem and he asks with his eyebrow raised, “Scared of the General?"    


That… ah yeah, that elicits a frown from Kemp and he straightens up a little. “With all due respect, sir… _you_ should know how intimidating he can be.”    


He almost has him where he wants him. “Yes, and I _did_ get married.”    


“Yeah, but you didn't marry his _daughter_.” For a moment… he wants to end the conversation, like every time someone not his sister wants to talk about Laura with him but she’d kick his ass if he didn’t whack Kemp over the head now and made him go out there, marry his Jenna and don’t give a _fuck_ as to who her father is.   


With his face totally straight, he replies, “No, _I_ married the daughter of a retired Gunnery Sergeant of the United States Marine Corps.” And let her die because I couldn’t bear the thought of being separated from her and didn’t simply transfer her out, ignoring her protests, he _almost_ added but was smart enough to keep to himself.   


But at least… Kemp finally looks like he might give in since he raises his hands in defeat and says, “Okay... you win.”   


_ Jackpot _ , Laura would have said… and then she would have given Kemp a slap to his head and practically dragged him out there, all the time giving him hell for keeping his lovely bride waiting for so long. However… that had never been _his_ style and after her death… it was even less. He sighs, this time audibly. “Captain… it’s not a bad thing to get a little jittery on your wedding day. It’s…” he has to swallow and judging by the face of Kemp, he knows exactly why that is, “it’s a great commitment, maybe only rivaled by the commitment you make when you decide to serve your country.”    


Kemp takes a deep breath. “I know, sir. Honestly, I do.” Then he laughs a little humorless laugh. “And I really shouldn’t be hiding here because of her father. After all, it as _me_ who made her talk to him again.” Right. So this is apparently also a very bad case of having opened Pandora’s Box.   


Against his will, he finds himself grinning, something he hasn’t done in… a very long time. “You’ll survive it, Captain.” But then he grows serious again, despite Kemp’s slightly pained face being just a little bit funny. “Most of all… because she’s worth it. She _is_ , right, Matt?”    


Kemp nods. “Yes, sir.” Then he takes a deep breath. “Thanks… thanks for understanding.” For some reason… he’s glad that a while ago Kemp thanked him for making him send Wells home so long ago. That had been one awkward conversation and he’s not really in the mood to repeat it… _ever_ again.    


However, it would be unfair and downright cruel to brush Kemp off now so he forces himself to say, “You’re welcome. Who else than me would?”    


Knowing what it cost him to say that, Kemp simply swallows and acknowledges it with another nod. Then he straightens up again, even goes as far as brushing off some non-existing dirt of his sleeves. “Right. Well… I… shouldn’t keep the General waiting any longer, huh?”    


With that, Kemp turns to leave and he joins him but also admonishes him, “Most of all, you shouldn’t keep your _bride_ waiting any longer. She never struck me as a particularly _patient_ person.”    


It makes Kemp snort and grin and he’s surprised at how good it feels to see that young officer be simply amused, without any lingering distress or sadness about what happened to his team back in the Pegasus galaxy… five years, he realizes, is a long time to be grieving. And maybe… Kemp realized it, too, because just before opening the door he grows serious again. “To be honest, sir… it wasn’t just the General. It was… I was just… I wish they could be here today.”    


He knows _exactly_ who ‘they’ are… and he swallows. Yes, five years is a long time… but both of them probably have to accept that it won’t ever go fully away… and that not talking about it won’t make it better, either. So he takes a deep breath himself and says, “I know. If it helps… I wish _she_ were here as well.”    


After he said that – or rather half-whispered it, really – they share a strange moment of absolute understanding. But then Kemp looks away pointedly and opens the door. Never forgetting his manners, the Captain gestures for him to go first and he graciously accepts, knowing Kemp will use that moment of being unwatched to regain his composure. He grants him another moment and then turns around. “Ready?”   


“Yes, sir,” is the only answer he gets and the only answer he needs and _finally_ Kemp is on his way to make a General’s daughter very, very happy and from somewhere far away he can hear an echo of Laura’s voice he kept hearing between his arrival on Earth and her funeral laughing faintly and then whispering _Well done, flyboy. I’m proud of you_ , and he finally feels able to allow himself a rare genuine smile.


	6. Song Without a Melody

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Revisting TLM-Timeline!Lorne, two years after returning to the Milky Way and burying his wife, a certain Captain Laura Cadman.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I remember writing this on a train, trying to keep from bawling my eyes because there was some business travelling guy across from me and I was aware of the fact that it wouldn't make me look good if I kept crying while typing away wildly. Anyway. What I wanted to say with this was, this is sad. No really.
> 
> (also, why doesn't AO3 like my code? o_O)

** Like a song without a melody **

„ _Und dann stehst du da  
Und dann denkst du nach  
Und plötzlich wird dir klar  
Es war schon wieder ein Jahr._

_Zwei Sommer ohne sie  
Sind wie ein Lied ohne Melodie  
Die Sonne scheint, die Blumen blühen,  
doch ohne sie…“_

_Kim Frank, "Zwei Sommer"_

 

It’s been two years now. Two years since he’d left the Pegasus Galaxy, for good. Two years since he’d buried his wife. And now he’s standing at her grave again. There’s just a simple headstone with her name and rank – Captain Laura Cadman-Lorne – and the dates of her birthday and day of death on it, like all the others here at Arlington National Cemetery.

He’d never wanted to bury her here, so far away from everything she’d loved, so far away from _him_ , but they hadn’t left him any chance. It had been their way of reminding him that marrying her had been an act that, had it taken place anywhere else than in Atlantis, would have had resulted in both their dishonourable discharge. Their way of reminding him that if it hadn’t been for their benevolence, he wouldn’t be still wearing the uniform.

And he feels like wearing the uniform is the only thing holding him together nowadays. It’s unfair to a lot of people and he knows it. He knows it’s unfair to his family, his new team at the SGC, the few Atlantis friends he still has left… but that’s just how it feels. If he didn’t have his posting at the SGC, his routine, his off-world missions… he’d simply fall apart, he’s sure of that. The strict military protocol belonging to the uniform is the only thing creating a wall – however flimsy it is – against the raw pain fully overwhelming him.

So here he stands in his Dress Blues – Laura would have loved seeing them – on the green fields of Arlington, dotted with white headstones, with a soft summer breeze wafting through the air and the scent of the nearby forest accompanying it, and the only thing he feels is regret.

Not regret for marrying her – he will _never_ regret _that_ – but for all the things he’ll forever miss out on. Nights on Atlantis with her, with the lights and the two moons and exotic star constellations, summers in San Francisco, winters in Chicago… having a family with her, seeing their children growing up, retiring with her… would it have been different, if she’d shipped out before him, when she had had the chance to do so? Would it have been different if they’d gone through the proper channels, waiting for one of them to be reassigned another posting and taken their time with marrying?

He rubs his hand over his eyes. She wouldn’t want him to play “Coulda, woulda, shoulda”. With a sigh he crouches down in front of her headstone. “I know you’d never believe me but you know what? They’re promoting me today. You’d be proud, I know, but I’m pretty sure you’d never stop teasing me.” And by God, yes, she would. She’d say to him that they were just promoting him because there was no way around it, with him being a war hero and everything or maybe because he’s got friends in high places he’s never bothered to introduce her to… He takes a deep shaky breath. “God, Laura, I miss you.” He squeezes his eyes shut and tells himself that the wetness in his eyes is only because he must be allergic to something flying around here.

He suddenly remembers walking up to her family’s home in the suburbs of Chicago, alongside the lake, on a summer day just like this… well, with slightly more wind. It had taken him a lot of hassling, but he’d managed to wrestle the permission from the brass to be the one telling Laura’s family about what had happened rather than some anonymous SGC representative. And so he’d flown to Chicago, with no idea how to break it to them that their daughter had died in some place far away, in a war he wasn’t allowed to speak to them about. He knew she hadn’t been able to tell her parents that she’d married, simply because there had been no possibility for it.

So when he’d stood in front of her family’s door, in civvies and with too much pain to speak about it in his heart, he’d felt like breaking down from everything he’d been carrying around ever since Jennifer Keller giving him Laura’s dog tags and his life crumbling to pieces right in front of him. Then her mother had opened the door, and all he could say had been “I’m sorry, Mrs. Cadman.” The look on her face had effectively robbed him of everything else to say, but that had been okay because ever since Laura’s death he’d felt speechless anyway.

In the end the visit had taken him over a day, and he still doesn’t quite remember how he had managed to tell her parents that he hadn’t been only Laura’s superior but, much more important, her husband as well. At first they’d been simply at a loss for words, then there had come the incomprehension, after that… the reproaches… but in the end, very slowly and tentatively, the acceptance that their daughter had married without telling them. He’d found it very hard to express that he hadn’t ask her to marry him out of some war-sparked whim, but because he genuinely loved her and would have done so anyway, but – and that had surprised him – her mother had understood him nevertheless.

He takes another shaky breath. “Two years, Laura. Two years and I still miss you like hell.” He wants to say so much more. Come back to me., he wants to say. Forgive me for not urging you hard enough to ship out before the attack., is another thing that comes to his mind. Make the pain go away., is what he wants to beg of her… or scream it at Fate, God, Michael… whoever he can blame for all of this.

And he wants someone to stop this questions that still keep coming at him in every possible and impossible moment. Would anything of this had happened if Sheppard hadn’t disappeared? Would anything of this had happened if he’d never acted on his feelings for Laura? Would… A small hand on his shoulder cuts his train of thought short. For a short insane moment he thinks that out of some intergalactic time-changing miracle the universe has granted him his wish of Laura returning to him, but then his mind kicks him and tells him that it’s Anna, his sister who lives in D.C. with her family and wants to celebrate his impending promotion to Lieutenant Colonel with him.

The hand is withdrawn as soon as she has made her presence known – ever since returning to Earth he’s become averse to every close bodily contact, even with family members – and he stands up. He doesn’t turn around to face her, though. The look of sympathy mixed with slight disapproval on her face is something he already knows anyway. And so he’s not surprised when she says: “You need to let her go, Evan. You need to forgive yourself.”

They’ve had this talk over and over again ever since his first visit to his parents after returning from the Pegasus Galaxy. And just like always, there’s only one thing he can answer: “No, Anna. I’ll never let her go, and I will never forgive myself. She was my wife. She deserves that much.”

Usually, that’s already the point where his sister – the only one in his family able to pry it from him that he’d married and become a widower in only the space of a few months – gives up and changes the subject, but obviously today something has compelled her to stay on the subject. “What she deserves, Evan, is peace. And it’s what you deserve as well.” She is his sister, she has to think this way. But just for once she doesn’t understand him.

She doesn’t understand the mix of guilt, pain, regret and the insane fear to forget Laura and what she means to him, even though she’d been patient and persistent enough to make him tell her everything about Laura – how they met, how the fell in love, how she died. At least everything he could tell her without compromising the SGC, that is.

He takes a deep breath of Virginia summer air, this time a little steadier than the last two. “Peace, Anna… peace was wherever she was.” Now he finally turns around. “How am I supposed to be at peace when she’s gone?” For a moment, his sister just stands there, oddly looking out of place in her flowing summer dress, but then she takes a step towards him and does something he hasn’t allowed anyone to do for two years: She hugs him, fiercely.

His first impulse is to draw back, but she just won’t let him go – just like she still refuses to let him withdraw completely behind his walls of work and uniform – and so he leans in and hugs her back. In a voice thick with emotion, she urges him: “Let her go, Evan. Don’t forget her, just _let her go_.” With that, his sister draws back from him, and it dawns on him that he was wrong. Anna _does_ understand him, maybe even better than he understands himself. He swallows.

“I’ll try.” At that, she gives him a little smile, as if to say “Fine by me… for the time being.”

What she does say, is: “Just don’t try it _alone_. Now, come on, the boys are already waiting to see their uncle getting promoted. And Charlie wants to talk to you about some work-related stuff.” He knows that this means his time here is up for today – being an Air Force wife and the mother of two sons, his sister has learned to deal with stubborn males – so he straightens his Dress Blues and simply follows her, after one last look at Laura’s grave and a silent goodbye.

But just as they reach the edge of the cemetery, an impulse makes him stop and half-turn around for one last time. There they are again… the endless rows of white headstones, with the wind blowing over them… and suddenly he hears it… a faint sound, like laughter. Like _Laura’s_ laughter. In that moment he just knows that a part of his heart will always be lost to her, always will be feeling incomplete without her – like a song without a melody – but that he hopes to be, in time, able to let her rest in the peace she deserves.

\-------------------  
Translation:

_"And then you’re standing there  
And then you’re starting to think  
And suddenly you realize  
Another year has gone by.  
_

_Two summers without her  
Are like a song without a melody  
The sun is shining, the flowers are in bloom,  
But without her…"_

Kim Frank, "Two Summers"  
  
~*~


	7. You And I Will Meet Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Revisting TLM-Timeline!Lorne again, back at Arlington National Cemetery, at the funeral of his wife, Captain Laura Cadman-Lorne.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, it's been a while since I updated anything. And please don't get too mad at me if I'm spamming anyone's inboxes. It's all **Arwen_Lune** 's fault, anyway. (also, I still owe her an e-mail. I will get to that ASAP. Really.)

** You And I Will Meet Again **

 

_“Don't say  
We have come now to the end  
White shores are calling  
You and I will meet again  
And you'll be here in my arms  
Just sleeping.”_

_Annie Lennox, “Into the West”_

 

Arlington National Cemetery. The place where his nation’s heroes are buried, hundreds of thousands of them. Presidents, war heroes, astronauts. Privates, Majors, Generals. And now, just in maybe an hour or two, there will be another Captain among them. Captain Laura Cadman-Lorne, United States Marine Corps, Atlantis Expedition. Such a great honor. And such an irony that this is about the last place he’d wanted to do this. Not to mention that he never wanted to do this _at all_. But she died, and now he has to bury her.

 

He still wishes he could have buried her in Colorado Springs, close to the Mountain, close to him… near to everything she worked so hard for to get it. Or at least in Chicago, close to her parents and brothers. But it had to be Arlington or nowhere, because he’d dared to go and marry her. But how could he have not married her? They’d been at war, they’d been in love and he would have done it anyway, so why wait? Of course there had been about a _million_ reasons for waiting to do this, but none of them counted when it was about her.

 

 _And that’s why you’re bitter about having to bury me here? That you think it’s a_ punishment _? God, someone really messed around with your head, Evan Lorne._ He shakes his head, a little furious. Ever since after kind of waking up from his shock induced stupor when he arrived back on Earth on the _Daedalus_ , three weeks after he left the Pegasus Galaxy together with Rodney McKay and Jennifer Keller for good, he keeps hearing her voice in his head in the oddest moments. Like now, fifteen minutes before the guests for her funeral are due to arrive. And he just can’t get it out of his head. It’s really irking him, because deep down that feels like going crazy.

 

He hasn’t told anyone about this, and he tries to simply ignore it, but it’s kind of difficult, because she mostly speaks up to admonish him, kick his ass, hit him over his head whenever he starts to struggle with his fate or sink into brooding about what he did wrong and how he could have prevented all of this happening. She’d been there in his head shortly before he’d knocked on her parents’ door to tell them about what happened to their daughter, telling him to go easy on himself. She’d also been there when he’d knocked on _his_ parents’ door to tell them that he was back at Cheyenne Mountain, urging him to let them console him.

 

Both times… he’d really wanted to heed her advice – telling himself that it was in fact _he_ who came up with those ideas – but hadn’t been able to. _That’s because you’re a stubborn mule who thinks he can fight out everything with himself and doesn’t need others’ help._ There she is again, not amused. But he simply can’t help it. Ever since Jennifer Keller told him that she never made it through that one attack on them, he feels like a part of him is damaged beyond repair, simply shut off from the rest of his body. He can even pinpoint which part exactly that is: His heart.

 

Even if he wanted to tell his grief to others he simply couldn’t. How could he explain to his parents this overwhelming feeling of loss, like his heart was ripped out and never replaced, only a gaping hole left behind? How could he talk to them about Laura when he feels like words have simply left him? How could he let them touch him when he feels like only one simple gesture of affection might send him over the edge, destroying the fragile shell of isolation he has built around himself, to keep him from falling apart?

 

 _Hey, weren’t_ you _the one making me see that I_ needed _to let people in if I wanted to survive?_ Indeed that had been him. She’d come back to Atlantis to try again with Carson Beckett, only to see him die a few weeks after that a _second_ time on some mission to help refugees from Michael’s onslaught. If he hadn’t been there to pick up the pieces, it would have destroyed her. And now that _his_ life is in pieces, the only person who he would have let him pick them up is dead.

 

 _God, Evan, don’t be an idiot. You_ have _someone to pick them up with you. In fact, don’t you_ dare _telling me your sister didn’t do a terrific job in the last week._ His sister. Well, yes. But “picking up the pieces”? More like nagging him and prodding him and prying to make him talk to her. While his parents had merely had their suspicions that something bigger than just “losing a base” had happened to him and chosen to leave him alone, until he would probably come and tell them about it on his own, his sister had realized pretty fast that he’d _never_ come and talk to her if she didn’t _make_ him talk.

 

A week after he’d come home, he’d realized he couldn’t take it anymore – his parents tiptoeing around him, throwing him wary glances, but pretending to think it was perfectly normal that he was doing everything stone-faced and practically not talking anything at all. One day he’d just taken the keys to his parents’ summer residence on a beach a few miles down from San Francisco, left them a note about his whereabouts and got the hell out of his parents’ house in the City.

 

He’d been out on the beach, probably for hours, when suddenly Anna had sat down beside him. For a very long time, neither of them had said anything. The weather had been terrible, windy and rainy, but that had been irrelevant. To him, it hadn’t mattered because nothing much matters anymore anyway, and to Anna it probably hadn’t mattered, because the only thing she cared about in that moment was her brother. So after what had seemed like an eternity, she’d simply said, “I won’t be leaving until you tell me what turned you into someone I barely recognize.”

 

Laura’s voice inside of him had simply said _Listen to that woman, flyboy. She’s making sense, unlike you._ Anna had, though, to say similar things about three or four other times, until she’d gotten _any_ response at all. And she’d had to threaten him with getting their mother on the case before he’d finally given in and told her about Laura. Haltingly at first, simply not _able_ to utter something about her without his throat constricting and his tongue refusing to work, but growing stronger with every patient nudge from his sister.

 

He’d told her everything – well, everything within the bounds of secrecy – from the very early days on the _Daedalus_ , where Laura had been just one of the many Marine officers headed for a tour in Atlantis – although a pretty one – to their first weeks of service, how they’d become co-workers, the fateful day the Doc died for the first time, then slowly becoming friends… and then his struggle to help her coping with the Doc’s _second_ death and them both realizing that they had stopped only being friends already quite a while back.

 

He’d told Anna about marrying Laura, but only briefly, because he still recalls all too well how happy they had been that day… without any other care in the world than each other. Just for this one day, he’d forgotten all about that wretched war. It had also helped others take their minds off death and destruction. Jennifer Keller had gone out of her way to find a white dress for Laura… she’d even made sure that there was some sort of a bachelorette bash for Laura, and Rodney McKay had, for once, refrained from any snapping. Samantha Carter, strictly against the thing at first, had been one of the donors for Laura’s “something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue”.

 

And talking about their time after being married… had simply been impossible, because even a month after her death it still feels all so unreal. Sometimes he still catches himself at expecting to see Laura coming through a door at every minute or to see her beside him when he wakes up or hear her sing completely out of tune in the shower. _Hey, I never sang out of tune! You just never remembered the songs the right way._ Now he can even see her indignant face right in front of his eyes, her folded arms, her foot tapping. Oh _God_ , how he misses her.

 

“You know, you don’t have to do this.” He turns around to see his sister approaching. He’s still not quite alright with her attending the funeral, but after she’d squeezed everything about Laura out of him she’d simply refused letting him go alone. In fact, letting her come with him had been the only way to avoid her telling their parents about Laura right away.

 

“Yes, I do. She was my wife and my subordinate. No way I’m going to let some Corps padre or some big shot guy from the brass speak here about her.” _Once upon a time_ you _used to be some big shot guy from the brass._ He had two weeks time for preparing himself to speak about her in front of all these people. He really should be able to do this.

 

“Evan… honestly. After what happened the last time you talked about her…” He closes his eyes, not wanting to think about _this_. But he’s already back inside his parents’ cabin, shortly after finally walking back alongside the beach with Anna, silent once again. She’d gone upstairs, to unpack, but for some reason his own strength had only lasted as far as the couch opposite the door. He’d sat down, put his face in his hands… and ten minutes later his sister had found him curled up on the couch, silently sobbing because his grief had finally broken through. He knows he’ll be forever grateful to her for simply putting one of their mother’s quilts over him and sitting down on the floor beside his head, patiently waiting until he had fallen asleep.

 

“I’m an officer of the United States Air Force, Anna. I think I’m able to keep a stiff upper lip when I have to.” _You know, I always preferred it when  you kept_ other _things stiff._ He nearly gasps, because he can see her face lighting up in a wide grin and hear the rich laughter that would have followed this clearly in his head. This has to stop. If he ever wants to get back to business as usual again, this has to stop. Because every time he hears or sees her in his head, the spot where his heart used to be just seems to ache a little more acutely.

 

His sister wants to give something back, but now all the other guests are arriving one by one. Laura’s parents – still thankful that he took it upon himself to organize everything – both her brothers and their significant others, lots of people who are either related to her or know her from her time in the Corps or at school, Rodney and Jennifer McKay, Sergeant Will Meyers and his wife Jessica… _I told you, you aren’t alone in this. But you just never listen to me._

 

There’s an awful lot of condolences and somber faces and hushed talking, but eventually, all are seated and he steps up the podium. It’s windy and rainy, just like last week at the beach. He takes a deep breath and then starts to speak, thanking the relatives and friends for coming, in a controlled and almost detached voice. When he’s through with the formalities, he has to take another deep breath.

 

“In my first draft of this speech, I wrote about what a good soldier Captain Laura Cadman-Lorne was, listing all her qualifications, achievements, talking about her integrity, her courage, her loyalty… but then I realized that this was how a superior writes about a subordinate, and Captain Cadman-Lorne – _Laura_ – deserves much more than this. She wasn’t only brave and intelligent, she was also… witty and had a temper to boot. She could reduce a disobeying Sergeant to rubble with that razor-sharp tongue of hers and light up a room simply by smiling. She wouldn’t take crap from anyone, least of all from me.” He has to pause, because the lump in his throat threatens to shut him up, but reminding himself of the fact that she would want him to buck up and simply go on makes him able to continue speaking.

 

“But underneath all that bravado and that big mouth, there was a woman… a woman who could love unconditionally. There were days when the only thing able to pull me through a mission was the unwavering certainty that she would be waiting for me when I got back, ready to glue me back together, no matter how her own day had been. And there were days when her laughter was all that I needed to make my world right again. She was, in short, my life, and I… loved her. I wish I told you at least once, Laura, and I’ll miss you.”

 

 _I know, flyboy. I’ve always known, and I’ll miss you, too._ She’s there again, smiling at him, albeit a little sad. _Don’t push me away again, idiot, because I have a few more words to say._ At first he wants to, but when this jarhead has set her mind on something, nothing can convince her to change it. _I know you, Evan Lorne. You’ll build up your walls and won’t let anyone in. But promise me that it won’t stay like this forever. Take your time, but don’t build those walls so high that no one can ever tear them down again._ He really wants to promise her, but right now it feels like those walls are the only way of staying sane. _Hey, look, I’ll promise you something in return: We’ll meet again. Not tomorrow and not next year – hopefully – but I’ll be_ over there _,_ _waiting for you. Until that: Live your life, become a General, find another wife… only don’t hide yourself away and drown in your grief. You’re far too cool for that._ She gives him a wink. _I’ll leave you now, but I won’t say farewell. I’ll simply say good-bye… I’ll find you when the time comes._ With that, she turns around and starts walking away from him, over the wet grass, sauntering through the rows of headstones. Shortly before she disappears, she half turns around again, laughing and blowing him one last kiss.

 

He swallows and after another shock second, he simply says, “But I won’t say farewell, jarhead. I’ll simply say good-bye.” With that he steps away from the podium, letting the military formalities take over. He feels strangely spent, but… some of the tension inside of him has eased away and the empty spot of his heart… feels a little less sore. _You won’t have to find me, jarhead. I’ll go looking for you first, when the time comes. Until that: Wait for me. I’ll be a good boy, I promise._ , he finally answers her.


	8. If It Kills Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Last visit to TLM-timeline!Lorne... back when Laura Cadman was still alive. What's going through your head when you're about to tie the knot amidst war and destruction?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew. So. Well. This series for one is now complete. I will never, ever, _ever_ tocuh TLM!Lorne again. Seriousl. Never fucking ever. He always exhausts me, if if I just re-read the story. Also, I editted a couple things in _The Faith That Cleans Your Wound_ , just FYI.

** If It Kills Me **

_“Well all I really wanna do is love you  
_ _A kind much closer than friends use  
_ _But I still can’t say it after all we’ve been through  
_ _And all I really want from you is to feel me_ _  
As the feeling inside keeps building_ _  
And I will find a way to you if it kills me  
If it kills me.”_

_Jason Mraz, “If it kills me”_

He wishes she wouldn’t love his Blues so much, because he feels mighty uncomfortable every time he has to put on his stiff formal uniform, but it’s his wedding, and his bride would be rightfully miffed if he didn’t honor this event enough by attending it only in his Atlantis BDUs. After all, _she_ went through quite some hassle to find a white dress that is appropriate for this significant point in both their lives. You only marry once in your life, or at least that’s how it should be.

He takes a deep breath and tugs at his tie for about the hundredth time. He told everyone including himself that he’s not nervous, and honestly, he doesn’t have any reason to be. After all, he was the one who proposed, and anyway, during the last months he had to face things much more difficult than simply saying “I do.” to the woman he loves. In fact, this seems to be the first happy event in his life for… an eternity now. Ever since Colonel Sheppard disappeared during a seemingly easy mission, things have gone down the drain. First Teyla had died – he still isn’t really over this, and he’ll probably never be – then Michael had started his crusade against the rest of the galaxy, seemingly always a step ahead of them, annihilating whole planets much faster than the Wraith would ever have done.

They lost so many people in those last few months, so many deaths… One of the first teams to die had been SGA4, led by Major Moore, a man he’d known since his Academy days. All of them – Major Moore, Captain Reece, Stabsarzt Morsberg, Sergeant DeLisle – had died during a mission to destroy one of Michael’s outposts. He just hopes that Moore and Reece didn’t die without telling each other how the feel about each other. It had been so obvious to everyone that he still wonders why they never told each other.

Another deep breath. He really shouldn’t be thinking about this, because it’s his wedding day today and the only thing he should be thinking about is that Lieutenant Laura Cadman will be his wife within an hour from now. However… he can’t help thinking about how it all happened, because it had taken another tragic death to set the things in motion that led to this day.

And even if he doesn’t want to, his mind has already wandered back to the day Carson Beckett had died. After Colonel Sheppard had disappeared they had learned very fast that they needed all the medical personnel they could get and a lucky discovery had made it possible for them to get enough of Michael’s anti-aging serum to break up the structure and synthesize it, so they had woken up Carson again. Laura had already been back on Atlantis, having taken up an offer he had made sure to appear casual. He still hasn’t told her that he’d been back on Earth just to tell her about the Carson clone, and she still believes that his visit had just been some aside to something more important. But to tell the truth: Even for a long time, there had been only few things more important to him than Laura Cadman.

It had still surprised him that she’d taken up the offer and come back. Of course, he’d expected her to hook up with Carson again, resigned himself to be happy for her and help her reconnect with the doctor she had been so obviously in love with before the explosion that had killed him, even if they hadn’t even been together at that time.

Things had gone differently, though, because even when they had woken up Carson again… there just wasn’t anything that happened. They danced around each other, passed time with each other… but something was missing, and Laura had been bothered enough by it that she had gone so far as to grumble about it in one of their late-night conversations. He’d tried to encourage her, tell her that things would work out… and then they had gone on a mission together and everything had changed.

He blinks, realizing that he’s been staring at his reflection in the mirror for at least five minutes. The man that’s staring back isn’t quite the one he’s used to see. For the first time he realizes that he has visibly aged in the last few months, even acquired his first grey hairs before he turned 40 and he partly blames his new position as the military CO of Atlantis for this. He never wanted this position – at least not so soon and under such circumstances – but it practically forced itself onto him, and now he’s working his ass off to keep this city running, still wishing Colonel Sheppard would miraculously reappear because he simply doesn’t feel cut out for this.

Laura and Colonel Carter and Jennifer Keller and lots of other people reassure him that he’s doing the job as well as Colonel Sheppard, but it doesn’t change the fact that people keep getting hurt and killed that probably wouldn’t have gotten hurt and killed if someone with much more experience than him would command the military contingent.

God, this just isn’t what he should be thinking about on his fucking wedding day. And still… the day Carson Beckett died a second time will forever be edged into his memory. It was a refugee relief mission, Carson and some other medics going to check on the population of a planet that had fled to their Alpha site, and Laura, Meyers, he and three other soldiers had been with them to provide back-up. The mission had gone down the drain, and Carson had been one of the people to do die. He still remembers having to grab Laura around her midriff and having to drag her back to the ‘Gate, crying and growling and struggling to get away and _do_ something and the raw pain she had been radiating still cuts through him exactly like it had hurt back then.

After that, he didn’t see her for the two days Colonel Carter had given her off, and when she didn’t show up for duty at the third day, Colonel Carter had sent him to her quarters. Originally he had had wanted to simply go there and order her to resume her duties because he just had had this feeling that the Marine in her would immediately respond to this, but when he’d arrived at her quarters and she hadn’t even opened at his loud bellow of “Lieutenant, you open this fucking door _right now_!” he’d known that something had been seriously wrong.

It had taken him half an hour of wrestling with the city for it to open the door, mostly because he’d suddenly felt such an insane rush of worry and urgency that he couldn’t really concentrate… and in the end, Rodney had to help him. The door had opened and he’d stepped in and there she had been lying curled up on the bed, completely still and for a terrible moment he’d thought she’d taken the last resort, after so much death and pain, but he’d rounded the bed and found her still breathing, her eyes wide open and dry. He’d sat down and for a while had simply said nothing, because all the words had left him at the sight of the unspeakable grief in her eyes. He’d found it mirroring his own grief and sadness and anger at not being able to hold off all the killing and dying.

Then, after what had seemed like an eternity to him, she’d whispered barely audibly, “Go away.” But he’d already known he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t let her alone with this, he wouldn’t back off like he used to… he’d just known that in this moment she needed him as much as he needed her, and instead of answering something he’d simply shook his head and reached out to take one of her hands.

To his surprise she had swatted it away. He’d tried again and suddenly she’d sat up and started pounding her fists against his chest and he had let her, at least for the first few moments. Somehow he’d felt like he deserved this punishment for not doing his job properly, for letting it happen that friends – and for Laura Carson had been more than a friend even if they never made it back again to where they once had been – died. But then his overwhelming need to make _her_ pain go away had made him catch her hands and hold on to them very firmly, while telling her to stop it. She still wouldn’t let him, claiming she was going insane, feeling like she failed Carson, failed the Corps, failed everything. Only when he had taken her in his arms and hugged her tightly she’d stopped her angry tirade and had fallen back to sobbing her heart out.

He sighs and looks out the window, letting his gaze swerve over the ocean but seeing nothing else than Laura crying back in that deep, dark, horrible night. That night had been one of the longest of his life. He’d simply held her while she had sobbed and mumbled and cursed and he had sworn to himself that he’d never let anyone make her hurt like this again. Ever since that night he’d finally known that he would keep away everything and everyone evil from her until his dying breath.

When he woke up again after that night, he’d called Colonel Carter, very quietly requesting another day off for Laura, as not to disturb her, because it had taken her the better part of the night to finally fall asleep. To his surprise, Colonel Carter hadn’t even asked about what exactly he had been doing for so long in a subordinate’s quarters and had ordered him to take the day off as well. He’d tried to protest, to tell her that he was fine and that he had a lot to do, but then Laura had stirred in her sleep, looking like something troubled her, and he’d known that this whole thing was far from over. He’d finally succumbed to Colonel Carter’s order and simply taken Laura in his arms again.

After that… things had changed. They hadn’t talked much, and on some point during the day, Laura had simply started kissing him. At first he’d wanted to make her stop, believing she was simply doing this because she needed some immediate physical comfort and would probably regret it the moment she realized whom she was kissing, but she’d silenced him and he’d finally realized that she knew _exactly_ who she was kissing.

He smiles, remembering that kiss. He can still recall how she tasted – salty because of the tears and a little sweet because he’d forced her to eat at least a some candy bar or other – and he can still recall each and every little touch of everything that had followed the kiss and his realization. And he also remembers the guilt because back then he still felt like touching someone belonging to someone else and because he had a city to run and a war to fight when all he wanted was never have to leave her arms again. Originally, he had had intended to give her comfort, help her heal her wounds, but as it had turned out, Laura had sensed that he needed healing as well.

She can still sense it, and she gets better at it with every day, which is why after only two months he had proposed to her. It had been nearly accidentally, after a particularly grueling mission when the only one being able to piece him together had been her, but the moment it had been out, he’d known he would have asked her anyway, with no regard whatsoever to his career. But that she had said yes – with no regard whatsoever to _her_ career – had been a minor miracle.

It had forced them to disclose their relationship to Colonel Carter, who’d given them the dressing down they both had deserved and even threatened to send them back to Earth _immediately_ to have them rightfully court-martialed. But then her gaze had met with one of the pictures on her desk – General O’Neill’s, if he remembers it correctly – and suddenly… something had changed. She’d put her face in her hands, only for a short moment, taken a deep breath, sat down again at her desk and had said, “You made a big mistake, both of you, and I shouldn’t sanction it, but as it is, you could have made an even bigger mistake. You can have this marriage, but it has to happen here, in a very modest and small ceremony. _And_ you will have to go through all the proper channels on Earth once you end your tour. I can’t – and more importantly _won’t_ – even promise you it’ll be an official marriage until everything is cleared up back home.”

And now, after one more month of hassling and cutting red tape and everything, he’s about to leave this room, go to the briefing room and meet there with Sergeant Will Meyers – who sure was a bit surprised to learn that his CO had chosen _him_ for his best man – and Jennifer Keller, Laura’s maid of honor. And of course Colonel Carter who is to be the one performing this wedding, and whom he owes the favor of a lifetime to. And most importantly of all, the woman he went through all of this for: Lieutenant Laura Cadman, soon to be Lieutenant Laura Cadman-Lorne.

There’s a knock on the door. A little startled, he tells the city to open it and it reveals a man in Marine Dress Blues, a smirk on his face. “Pardon me, sir, but Colonel Carter sent me.”

He raises his eyebrow at his Sergeant. “Concerned I’d be getting cold feet?”

Now Meyers grins a little sheepishly. “Something like that, yeah. Told her the boss _never_ backs down from anything, but she didn’t seem very convinced about it.”

He can’t help smile at that. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Sergeant. Sure means a lot coming from a jarhead.” Is that a blush he can detect on Meyers’ face? Nah, not in a million years. He straightens out his jacket, corrects his tie and adds, “Come on, let’s go. Wouldn’t look too good if both the bridegroom and his best man would arrive after the bride.”

With that, they both set off for an event that he just feels will change his whole life forever, maybe even more than Colonel Sheppard’s disappearance changed it. Because he just knows that Laura Cadman will be the first and only woman he will ever marry, and because the sheer thought of being married to _her_ makes him feel like finally arriving… home. And maybe… maybe today he will _finally_ get around telling her that he loves her, not in actions alone, but in those three little words that mean the world. Yes, marrying Laura Cadman will irrevocably change his life, and for the better.


End file.
